Online Revenue & Investment for Hyper Local Media
Jeff Jarvis held a hyper-local, mini-camp at the Graduate School of Journalism in NYC on Nov. 11, 2009.
It was called: The New Business Models for News conference.
I was invited to do a session focused on helping hyper-local web publishers, build realistic business models in order to grow revenue. Here’s the actual presentation:
A movie about a local TV news team anchored by Ron Burgundy, becomes a hit. Did the writers really have to stretch their imagination in order to come up with bits for this Will Farrell flick? Not likely. For fodder, they just turned on the local newscast of Anytown USA.
Local TV news; Change or wither. Andrew Hayward, former president of CBS News, shared his thoughts about local TV news, and he pulled no punches. You don’t have to be a mind reader to pick up his vibe……. it better change, or it’s doomed. Here’s what I gleaned up from his speech via an article in a Louisville newspaper. Read the entire article by Rick Redding here.
Some steps to fix it:
It’s obvious from the outstanding turn out we get for our “Web Advertising 101″ seminars. In every city we travel to, from Chicago to Scranton, small and mid size businesses are moving more of their marketing budgets over to the Internet. Once they get some some basic education, encouragement and proof that it will work, they starting making the move to web.
Who will teach the local advertiser? Optimally, it should be the traditional reps from the local media company. They have the relationships, the trust, and the ear of the local advertiser. The challenge though, is that the traditional reps need a better understanding of how to effectively sell the benefits of the web, in a clear, simple way that the small business can grasp. That is not easy, especially when many traditional reps rely on the local “web expert” to help them through the sales call.
TIP: it’s not a good thing when a newspaper or TV rep responds to a client who wants web, and says…..”let me get my web guru in here to talk to you. I’m not too sure about this web thing”. This makes the traditional rep look out of touch and disconnected from the new world of advertising.
The race in on. Ad dollars are moving online, with TV, Radio and Newspapers ramping up their local sales efforts with varying degrees of success. The current soft economy only accelerates this process. The smart local properties understand they’re primarily competing with Google, ReachLocal, ServiceMagic and other online media companies that have their eyes set on local ad dollars.
Few will profit, most will fail. In each market, only a very few Broadcast & Newspaper companies will turn an online profit. With outside ‘pure-plays’ taking about 50% of every dollar out of the market, the remaining ad dollars will be sucked up by the most aggressive, serious players.
